


If You Will Have Me

by kuiske



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Fluff, Kissing, M/M, no real warnings they're schmoopy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-26 08:07:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7566601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuiske/pseuds/kuiske
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thorin had <i>clearly</i> been plotting something for three whole months now, and surely even a more temperate dwarf than Dwalin would’ve started to feel mildly waspish by now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Will Have Me

If you’d have happened to ask Dwalin, he would have told you that dwarves being good at keeping secrets was one of the most wide-spread misconceptions about their race among the other peoples of the Middle Earth.

True, the dwarrow-kind guarded their hidden knowledge with unparalleled ferocity, and guarded it so well that the most that was known about them was hearsay, folk-tale or an outright lie. True, it was widely - and spitefully - regarded to be easier to pull teeth from a live Dragon than to wheedle secrets from a dwarf. True, among outsiders they rarely spoke at all beyond the necessities of their trade.

Yet Dwalin felt it could hardly be counted as _their_ merit that the other races utterly lacked the eyes and wits to see what was going on right under their noses. Thus it logically followed that it could not be said that dwarves were particularly good at keeping secrets. _That_ would’ve required some rudimentary ability to conceal that they had a secret in the first place.

Thorin, Dwalin thought with no small amount of irritation, though in many other matters truly extraordinary was a very typical dwarf in this regard. It was extremely, _painfully_ obvious that he was keeping something from him, and had for a while.

(Admittedly, in some other circumstances Dwalin might have been willing to concede that his logic was perhaps not as rock-solid as that, and that his judgement just _might_ have been slightly clouded by his annoyance. But Thorin had _clearly_ been plotting something for _three whole months_ now, and surely even a more temperate dwarf than himself would’ve started to feel mildly waspish by now.)

“Out with it already,” he would grunt at Thorin in the forge at least once a week.

“With what?” Thorin would answer airily, eyes so wide and innocent that he couldn’t have hoped to fool anybody, Dwalin least of all.

Dwalin’s Name Day came and went with a feast of boar and ale and cakes and Thorin presented him with a new whetstone and a fresh bottle of fine pine-scented oil. Both were very useful gifts - though he’d had considerably much more fun with the oil (and so had Thorin, judging by the scratches he’d left in his back) and absolutely nothing deserving any levels of secrecy had come to pass.

“Has Thorin told _you_ what he’s planning?” Dwalin asked Balin over dishes one day.

“Oh he’s off to pub tonight. Glóin lost his hunting knife to him over cards a while ago and he’s determined to win it back, I’d have thought Thorin’d mentioned it to you,” Balin answered with a serene smile he used when he wanted Men to believe that he was harmless and just on this side of dim.

“You’re in on whatever Thorin’s hiding from me too aren’t you?” he accused Dís as they skinned a deer she had brought down. 

“Can’t imagine what you mean,” Dís said, barely even bothering to keep up the facade of ignorance. “There’s absolutely nothing being hidden from you, you’re just bored and you probably need more cooking shifts to pass your time.”

Durin’s Day passed as well, with nothing out of the ordinary. Every dwarf in Ered Luin celebrated from the moon-rise to the dawn and exchanged small gifts of sweets and trinkets among friends and family. All as was customary, or close enough as they managed in the exile, and by the Seven Fathers Dwalin _knew_ Thorin was up to something.

Eventually he grew frustrated enough to ask Fíli and Kíli about it, but either the dwarflings knew nothing and were unaware of the mere possibility of a grand-scale deception, or then they had been successfully bribed into holding their silence.

It was _infuriating_.

And it was perhaps precisely because of his long suffering that Dwalin threw his arms up and exclaimed “Finally!” when Thorin asked whether he’d have free time to spare after they closed down the forge one chilly winter afternoon.

Thorin snorted with laughter and nudged him in the shoulder.

“Go wash off the worst of the soot. I’ve got a surprise for you,” he smiled a little nervously. “Don’t worry, it’s not a big deal, no one else will be there to see it, and you’re allowed to say no if you feel like it.”

“Now, how’s _that_ supposed to convince me it won’t be a big deal?”

“Hush. Wash off, practice a touched expression and please let me down kindly if you will.”

“Thorin-”

But Thorin waved him off and was already walking towards their house, slightly too fast to pass for nonchalant.

Right. That wasn’t disconcerting _at all_.

Yet Dwalin did as he was bid; he washed his face and even changed his tunic to a clean one on instinct, and then he waited anxiously in their bedroom for Thorin to arrive and put him out of his misery.

By the Maker, Thorin _hated_ surprises himself, you’d have thought he wouldn’t inflict them on anyone else.

After an eternity - or roughly fifteen minutes - of waiting Thorin knocked on the door and inched shyly into the room as if it he hadn’t been sharing it with Dwalin since they’d built the house .

“So?” Thorin said hesitantly.

“So,” Dwalin repeated.

“You know we’ve been together for a while now-”

“Fifty years, or close enough by my reckoning.”

“Aye, and I was thinking...”

“Durin forbid.”

“Shut up. Let me say this. Anyway, I was thinking. About those fifty years. And...”

Thorin stepped closer and pressed a small bundle of soft leather in Dwalin’s hands. He started to open it very slowly, and Thorin looked away and went on.

“It has been a long time. And I don’t want to get married any more than you do, but I would- if you would permit me... If you will have me...”

“Thorin,” Dwalin breathed out weakly, the unwrapped gift gleaming on the palm of his hand.

It was a ring.

It was a large green gemstone set in a narrow frame of gold decorated with intricate geometric pattern.

It was beautiful, and too much; since when could they afford gold, and it was _beautiful_.

Dwalin looked up, looked at Thorin who had fixed his eyes firmly on a soot smudge on the wall and fallen silent. Dwalin touched his arm and Thorin tore his gaze from the wall and looked him in the face like it pained him, eyes bleeding blue, and when he spoke his voice cracked with emotion.

“I would bind myself to you. Because for me there shall not be another. Not in this life, nor in our Maker’s Halls, nor in the next world that we shall build anew. I am yours. Body and soul. Whether you will have me or not, I am yours.”

“Thorin...”

Dwalin felt like he should’ve had something else to say, but his throat threatened to close up and he had no words. So he yanked Thorin close with his free hand and kissed him, and he kept kissing him as he backed them up to bed and pulled Thorin down on it with him.

“You could’ve just asked,” Dwalin breathed against Thorin’s mouth. “ You didn’t have to-”

“I wanted to,” Thorin whispered. “I wanted to ask you properly. Or as properly as...”

Thorin trailed off, and Dwalin knew what he was about to say.

_As properly as possible under the circumstances._

And he figured he could hear Thorin’s thoughts on his gift as well, clear as spring water in the mountains: 

_It was the best I could do, but it should’ve been emerald or jade, not a piece of green onyx that was damn near too much for me to afford. The band should’ve been thicker, should’ve had more gold, but that was the best I could do and I know my best is not enough but..._

Dwalin kissed Thorin again to shut up the one he heard in his head.

“It’s beautiful. Thank you,” Dwalin bit Thorin’s lip lightly. “But I’m just a bit vexed you didn’t give me a chance to prepare a gift for you in return.”

“I don’t need anything,” Thorin mumbled. “I just-”

“You just accidentally put yourself in a place where I can get you a gift you can’t feasibly complain about,” Dwalin finished for him impishly. “I mean I could always give you my dick...”

“I’d accept,” Thorin grinned.

“Good to know,” Dwalin laughed. “Why a ring, though?”

“Because you have better track record with your fingers than your ears,” Thorin said and reached to kiss his mangled ear. “And ear cuffs or a ring were my two feasible options. Or a nose ring, but I’m not sure I’d trust you with that either...”

“Cheeky.”

“I prefer ‘realist’.”

Dwalin snorted.

“Like hell you are. You’re dramatic sap who just wants to see me dressed up nice once in a while.”

“What can I say? I confess, “ Thorin said. “Does that mean yes, though?”

“And here I was just about to say something about you being the brains while I’m the looks,” Dwalin rolled his eyes. “Yes, it’s a yes. Just give me time to get something to you. Or were you planning on going through with actual proper courting?”

They never had done that, either. In a world without the Dragon they’d have had a courting period of exchanging gifts and getting to know each other properly before moving on to anything more serious, but they had been still on the road and much too poor when they’d crossed the line between friends and lovers. Whatever gifts that had passed between them had been mostly attempts to make certain that the other went to bed slightly less hungry, and failed attempts more often than not at that.

“Not much of a point for that, is there?” Thorin huffed. 

“No, not really.”

Dwalin slid the ring into his finger and watched it gleam in the flames of their fireplace. It had been too much, but he’d never deny the sight of gold reflecting fire wasn’t pleasing to the eye.

“Who else knew?” he asked abruptly. “I mean I’ve known you’ve been sitting on a secret for months now, and I did ask the others...”

“I didn’t exactly tell anyone, though I’m pretty sure Dís guessed,” Thorin said. “I asked her to keep you out of the forge while I was working on the ring, so it can’t have been a difficult thing to put together. I don’t know about Balin, though he probably guessed too. Or maybe not, maybe he just enjoyed watching you fret over this.”

“Well, I’ll have you know you were all utterly insufferable,” Dwalin growled. “Did it really take you over three months to forge a ring?”

Thorin didn’t answer.

“Oh _Maker_ ,” Dwalin groaned. “You got the ring done in a week and spent months polishing your speech, didn’t you?”

Thorin still didn’t answer, but he was turning rather scarlet around the ears. 

He was saved by a knock on the door. 

“Ama said you’re supposed to stop whatever you’re doing now and go help her with dinner!” Fíli’s high child’s voice rang through it. “And I know I’m not allowed to open doors when they’re closed, but it’s not bedtime yet and you really should come down!”

Dwalin and Thorin looked at each other and burst into a helpless fit of giggles.

“We really should go down and help," Dwalin murmured and bit Thorin’s ear gently. “My One.”


End file.
